Styx: Master of Shadows Sneaks Up With A New Story Trailer

Styx: Master of Shadows is sneaking up on its “sometime in 2014” release window and, with only a few months left to emerge from darkness, it looks like the team at Cyanide wants to remind everyone what lies in wait. Enter a brand new trailer showing off the titular unlikely hero, who is set to make his way to the World Tree on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.

Some of you may recall Styx as being a character in 2012's Of Orcs and Men. Well, that's because Master of Shadows is a prequel, abandoning some of the grand scale from the previous game in the series to focus on a single character's tale; that of a sneaky goblin.

A brand new trailer for the game was released this weekend on the PlayStation Blog, giving a brief glimpse at the world players will soon be invading. In case the game's title didn't give it away, Cyanide Game Director Julien Desourteaux promises that players can expect plenty of stealth set within a “mature fantasy universe,” so I'm guessing that means blood and naughty words are on the table.

It looks like it wouldn't be too off base to refer to Styx as a sort of 3D puzzle game, which Desourteaux goes on to back up in the trailer reveal.

“We want to offer a real challenge to the player, with a game requiring strategy and reflection,” Desourteaux said. “Players really have to take care of many details to progress in a level. But to make things fair, players have powerful tools at their disposal that they'll have to use wisely.”

The most powerful of these tools is Amber, which originally comes from that legendary World Tree we were just talking about. You can pretty much think of Amber as mana, as all of Styx's best tricks come from this chuggable liquid. He can use it to go invisible or summon minions to do his bidding, which requires him to basically puke a full-grown goblin into existence. Eeeeeew.

The fun twist is that using all of this Amber is causing Styx to go a bit loopy, so there's no telling what sort of tricks his own madness will force into the game world.

Speaking of the game world, players will be invading a massive, miles-high tower that serves as the home to the World Tree. It is, of course, heavily guarded, meaning that Styx will have to rely on his full bag of tricks if he hopes to reach his goal. The way up is actually open to the player, making for a sort of vertical open-ended adventure.

Styx: Master of Shadows certainly sounds unique, which is exactly what I'd like to see more of out of this new generation of consoles. Look for it later this year on the Xbox One, PC and PlayStation 4.